Ruthless stars Mulroney as a high school wrestling coach whose daughter was killed by a guy she was on a date with. Trying to pick up the pieces, he discovers one of the kids trying out for his team, Catia (Melissa Diaz), might be getting abused at home. So he pays her a visit and breaks her stepfather's (Mauricio Mendoza) arms and hands, thinking that'll solve the problem. Normally it would, but in the world of 2020s DTV, everything leads to a sex trafficking ring, and this is no different, as Catia's stepfather sells her to some group led by Jeff Fahey that operates this overly elaborate thing out of Vegas. Mulroney knows he's the only thing that stands between Catia being sold to some buyer overseas, so he gets in his SUV and breaks as many arms and legs as he can to get her back.
As Ty and I saw it, this suffered in three ways. First, Mulroney's character wasn't that likeable. I think they were going for the tough-love coach kind of thing, but he just seemed like a jerk to Catia. Second, the whole trafficking thing was too convoluted. When he gets to Vegas and infiltrates the baddies, he has to create an account and sign in? Is he making a purchase from a sex trafficking ring, or signing up for a loyalty account for his local cafe? And finally, the breaking bones thing was kind of not "ruthless." When you call a movie "ruthless," for us as the audience, we're looking for a killing spree. We come from the world of PM and Cannon, where guys get set on fire and kicked out of windows. Mick Fleetwood taking one between the eyes from Robert Patrick in a Vegas casino. C. Thomas Howell tossing Ed Lauter out of a biplane. Chuck Norris blowing up Richard Lynch with a rocket launcher. That shit's "ruthless." None of that works the same if the hero just breaks their arms. There were some positives though. Camacho's direction was solid, Mulroney's lead was enough to let us know that he could do this in more DTV actioners, and I also liked Melissa Diaz as Catia. I think as a Hulu time-waster you could do a lot worse, it just needed to be more to live up to its name.
This is now 53 tags for Art Camacho on the site, which is third all-time behind Dolph and Daniels; plus this is his 12th director tag, which puts him in a six-way tie for fourth all-time in that category, and four back of Fred Olen Ray for second-most. As his directed films goes, this is well behind Recoil, which for me is his best, but I think from there it's better than most. What hurts this film isn't his ability as a director, in fact I think that's what gives this a level of quality that keeps it from being a full-on miss. Maybe if this is called "The Wrestling Coach" it's not saddled with the expectations of what "Ruthless" should be, but even then the plot has holes in it that hurt it, and I don't know that as a director he was going to overcome that. As a fan of his work for a long time, we came into this with high expectations, but I also think it shouldn't be overlooked that he's directed a film that doesn't look out of place with the other DTV actioners on Hulu, like Wanted Man or Section 8, which is fantastic to see, especially knowing how much work he's put into getting to this point. Here's to you Mr. Camacho, 90s action wouldn't be what it is without you, and congratulations on the success you're seeing with this one, it's well-deserved.
Mitch at The Video Vacuum in his review of one of Cinema Epoch's Emmanuel-titled flicks complained that you can't name a movie "Emmanuel" and not have nudity--there's an expectation there that that name carries with it. I think the same is true of the title "Ruthless." I mean, look at that cover, a grimacing Mulroney putting a gun into the jacket of a well-tailored suit, with the tagline "One by one. He'll X them out." It's like it's setting up for a remake of Zero Tolerance--and how amazing would that be? Fahey as one of the baddies, along with a group of other character actors, like maybe Eric Roberts and Michael Pare, and Mulroney being like "you killed my daughter, now I'm coming for all of you." Instead, this movie had too much ruth. No one was "X'd" out, there was no tailored suit and gun, no Fahey in a casino taking one between the eyes, or the guy from Bosch getting tossed out of a window. If anything though Mulroney's performance here told us he could do that, we just need to see it. Maybe he and Camacho can get a do-over and make a "Ruthless" that's sufficiently lacking in ruth.
The human trafficking thing is an en vogue topic, especially since it's achieved this Satanic Panic-level among many Conservative types. Middle class women all over America are posting warnings on their Facebook about suspicious people putting empty water bottles and pieces of cheese on their cars parked at the local Hobby Lobby or Michael's, looking to ensnare them in convoluted trafficking rings that don't actually exist. That doesn't mean human trafficking isn't a serious concern that needs to be addressed though, it just isn't this thing like we see in this movie where Mulroney goes into a fancy hotel room and makes an online account and bids on the girl he wants. That's where I think this could've worked better, is if it was closer to what human trafficking actually is. Like let's say Catia's stepfather still sells her to some shady type, and he tells her mother that she ran away. Fahey isn't some rich business guy, he's just some lowlife who moves her around and connects with people online who pay to sleep with her. And Mulroney's character knows the stepfather's lying about Catia running away, and he investigates--then goes on a killing spree to find her--I'm not saying it all needs to be realistic, but had they played it closer to reality, it wouldn't have been so convoluted. Also the way they felt they had to tie in the daughter's killing to the trafficking ring, why not just have her be killed by a creep she went on a date with? It diminishes the real and more common issue of women actually experiencing violence in situations like that that have nothing to do with fictitious trafficking rings--and it still would've been enough of a motivation for Mulroney to want to save Catia.
Finally, in the podcast episode I mentioned my friend in college who talked about the fact that you can be "ruthless," but you can't "have ruth." I've played with the word a bit as I've been talking about this movie, but it is an interesting quirk in the English language. "-less" suggests "without," but how can you be without something that can't exist on its own? I did some digging (looked it up on Quora), and it turns out "ruth," comes from the verb "rue," which makes more sense. There was a noun form of "rue" that looked like "rueth," then "ruth," and it was from that that "ruthless" was born. At some point I guess we dumped that noun form of "rue," because spellcheck doesn't like "ruth," just the name "Ruth," but "ruthless" survived. The thing is, to describe a movie called Ruthless that isn't "ruthless," we have to have the noun "ruth" to show the thing it's not lacking by not being "ruthless." Like if the film was called "Penniless" but Mulroney's character had money, we'd say "he wasn't lacking in pennies" to critique the movie. The other thing is, if "ruthless" comes from the noun "rue," could we use the homophone "roux" and have a movie where Mulroney is a chef out for revenge called "Rouxthless"?
And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently get this on Hulu. It's not horrible, and you may find it to be a fun time killer, it just doesn't live up to that title, tagline, and cover image. As far as the podcast episode, it's number 162 in the archives, "Dermot Double Feature," where we look at this and Lights Out, another film starring Mulroney.
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14670094
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